Living With a Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge

These are the best Android phones I've ever carried, with great performance and the best screens I've seen on a smartphone to date.

Over the past few weeks, I've been spending a lot of time using Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge, while also trying out the regular Galaxy S6. These clearly define the top end of the Android phone market these days, and are quite impressive—the best Android phones I've ever carried, with great performance and the best screens I've seen on a smartphone to date.

They do also involve some obvious trade-offs compared with the previous Galaxy models and most other Android phones. Notably, they no longer have removable batteries or a microSD slot for expanded flash storage, two features I liked on the S5 and the Note 4. But the advantage is a design that is lighter, sleeker, faster, and generally better.

The difference is apparent when you first see the devices. Gone is the leatherette back and chrome edges of the earlier Galaxy models, which are replaced by a sleek design with all glass and metal. Even the back of the device is covered with hardened glass, and the result looks quite good. Having a removable battery lets you carry a spare, but there are now lots of good external chargers if you need them, and in general, I found battery life was sufficient for a full day in almost all situations.

Memory is harder: both units I tested had 32GB of storage, but the pre-installed software on the Sprint models came to 6.75GB, leaving relatively little local storage. (A few years ago, it would have seemed like a lot, but times change.) Still, in the era of cloud storage, the need for expandable storage has decreased and 32GB is probably sufficient for most people. Other models with more storage are available at higher prices, just as in Apple's model. I prefer having an SD slot, but it isn't as important as it used to be.

Weighing 4.87 ounces and measuring 5.65 by 2.78 by 0.27 inches, it comes across as light and thin—just a tad bigger than the iPhone 6. It's an easy phone to carry.

For me, two features about the S6 devices really stood out: the display and the camera.

The display is a 5.1-inch Super AMOLED with a resolution of 2,560 by 1,440. That's the same resolution as on the larger Note 4, but on a smaller display, giving it a resolution of 577 pixels per inch. It just makes text and photos a little bit clearer. In addition, as was true on the Note, the screen is vibrant with great colors, and I found it generally looked even a bit better—the best screen I've seen yet.

The big difference between the two models is that the Edge model sports a curved display that wraps around the side of the phone. It has the same resolution, with the Edge just used for extra features. The primary use of the Edge is to set it up with a feature called "people Edge," which lets you pick your five most frequent contacts, each indicated by a different color; the Edge then lights up with that color when you get a notification (a text, email, or phone call from one of those contacts). Because of the curve, even when the phone is upside down, it will light up appropriately to show you who is calling. You can also quickly call, email, or text your contacts. The Edge also serves as an alarm clock at night, lighting up a bit so you can see the time.

When the main screen is off, you can rub your finger against the Edge to quickly see the time, date, and weather and scroll through some basic news headlines. I'm not quite sure why you wouldn't just turn the phone on for this, but it is interesting. All this makes the Edge feature somewhat more useful, but the real function of the Edge is aesthetic. The phone just looks cooler with it. I'm not sure that it's worth an extra $100 or so, but it does look quite nice.

Great-Looking Photos The camera is also particularly nice. The S6 has a 16-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, each with an f/1.9 aperture lens designed to improve low-light photography. Generally, I don't think megapixels by themselves are a good measure of a camera—the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus only have 8-megapixel cameras, but take wonderful shots.

In daylight, all of the current top-end phones I've tried do a very nice job of landscapes and portraits. I couldn't really tell much difference; the Note 4, the S6 models, and the iPhone 6 Plus all looked quite good. But in low-light situations, both at an evening carnival and at a concert, I clearly got better shots from the S6 than I did with the other phones. (The iPhone 6 Plus takes a different approach to some low-light shots, making them brighter, but with much more noise; in some cases, the S6 was a bit darker, but it was generally sharper.)

One other difference is that the front-facing camera takes wider shots than most phones I've seen, letting you put more people in a selfie. It also has a "wide selfie" mode, which pretty much takes a panorama to capture a wider-looking shot. I rarely find these important, because I just don't take many selfies, but it may matter more to those who do. However, for actual photo detail, I preferred the front-facing shots from the Phone 6 Plus, although the Galaxy shots looked okay, too.

As with most modern phones, the camera software has a lot of options, including a relatively simple auto mode that most people will generally use, and a Pro mode that lets you choose exposure, ISO, white balance, and focal length. It still has several other modes, including the standard panorama mode, and modes for slow-motion and fast-motion shots. But many of the more unusual modes that Samsung included in previous models—such as "dual camera," where you could put a picture of yourself from the front-facing camera inside a picture taken from the real camera—have now been removed from the phone itself, though you can still download them if you want them. It makes the software simpler, and that's good.

It can also take video. The default is 1080p recordings at 30 frames per second, although it also offers a 1080p at 60 frames per second, or 2,560 by 1,440 or UHD/4K 3,840 by 2,160 at 30 frames per second.

But what I liked most about the photography was how quickly you can take a picture. Double tapping on the home button brings up the camera application very quickly.

A 14nm Processor and More For a processor, the S6 sports a 1.5 GHz Samsung Exynos 7420 octa-core, making these the first phones I've seen that use applications processors manufactured on a 14nm, FinFET process. Benchmarks from my colleague Sascha Segan show very impressive results, much faster than most Android phones on tasks such as scrolling and photo manipulation. While the higher-resolution display means benchmark scores for some graphics-intensive tasks aren't as impressive (because it takes more horsepower to drive a higher-resolution display), in the real world, it seemed quite impressive, both in general applications and at graphics-intensive tasks such as games. This is the first flagship Android phone in the U.S. I've seen that didn't have a Qualcomm applications processor (though the models I tested did use Qualcomm modems) and it certainly appears that Samsung has a top-flight competitor with the current Exynos.

Other features include an updated fingerprint reader that now works by pressing your finger against the home button (as opposed to swiping it across the reader in the Note 4). I found it worked a bit better, but the iPhone 6's fingerprint reader still works best for me.

Eventually, the S6 is supposed to get Samsung Pay, which has a unique feature of being able to work with traditional magnetic card readers, but that's not out yet, so I wasn't able to test. I was able to quickly look at how models of the Gear VR with the S6 stack up vs. the Note 4 version; the higher-resolution screen does make the virtual reality experience notably better.

The S6 also comes with integrated support for "wireless charging," (which means you place the phone down on a compatible charging station, without having to plug anything into the phone, though the charging station still has to be plugged in) though you'll have to buy the charging station separately. I found it took a bit longer to charge with the wireless charging—about three hours compared with two, but it works, and could be convenient to some.

One feature the S5 had that is missing in the S6 is water resistance. (Samsung just announced an S6 Active that has this feature, but I haven't tried that phone yet.) That provides some peace of mind when answering a call or taking a photo in the rain, so I missed it; but haven't had any issues yet.

On the software side, it runs Android 5.0 Lollipop (5.0.2) with Samsung's TouchWiz extensions. The good news is that Samsung's TouchWiz software continues to get lighter and less obtrusive with each version. Generally, Samsung's applications are getting simpler, which is good, but I do miss some features. For instance, the new Calendar app lacks an "agenda" or "schedule" mode that just lists all your events going forward (rather than focusing on a single day, week, or month). I prefer that view, but you can download Google's Calendar app to get it back.

You can now do a "long press" on the home button to bring up the Google application. Although it is off by default you can turn on Google Now cards (assuming your domain allows it) and set it to respond to "OK Google" whenever the screen is on or the phone is charging. I found this worked pretty well. It does still come with Samsung's S Voice application for voice control though it's no longer on by default, which is a good thing. Samsung says that S Voice offers better spoken feedback for notifications when in hands-free mode, but it's not something I've ever really wanted.

I do like Samsung's SmartSwitch feature, which will move all the information from an old phone to a new one, including photos, music, contacts, phone logs, and texts. It's a great addition to using the Google account to move your account info and most applications.

Overall, I have been quite impressed with the S6, which is the best Android phone I've carried. It looks more modern, with the best screen I've yet seen, a fast processor, and a camera that worked really well for me.

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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